


A Cardiac Event

by Callisto



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst and Humor, Curtain Fic, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-02
Updated: 2012-08-02
Packaged: 2017-11-11 06:21:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/475462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callisto/pseuds/Callisto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It turns out Sam has Paroxysmal Super (Supra, Dean, Supra) ventricular Tachycardia, which, while not a heart attack, is way too long and Latin to be comforting. Dean has heard it on Dr Sexy, he’s sure. Right before the guy on the gurney gets paddled and flatlines.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Cardiac Event

**Author's Note:**

> Set vaguely post everything, with a few season 4 references. Beta'd by the ever fabulous Ancasta.

Dean is pissed when it happens. But not at Sam. His boss seems to think a tire rotation is a good reason to get Dean off the sofa and into work on his day off.

He picks up his tools and stops at the kitchen door. “I swear, the next time that asshole calls me in on a Sunday...” He tails off. Sam is sitting, rubbing his chest, and staring at a condiment in his left hand.

“Sam?”

“Hey, Dean.”

“You okay?”

“Um...no, actually. I feel...weird.”

“Weird how?”

Dean has already dropped his tool box on the table and grabbed Sam’s chin.

“Headache?”

“No, um...” Sam takes Dean’s hand and moves it down to rest palm flat on his chest. Sam looks at him, two spots of color high on his cheeks, shoulders rising and falling oddly. “Feel that?”

Holy shit. “Yeah, what the hell?” Sam’s heart is beating all over the place.

“I know, right? It’s the strangest thing. One minute I’m fine, the next I’m bending down to look for the cinnamon and boom.”

“Sam, do not sit there clutching your chest and say ‘boom’.” 

“No, no. I mean... I was in here making that apple pie you like. You remember? The one with the cinnamon crust that I...that I made for Carla last month, and I was thinking maybe I’d do it now so by evening the dough’d be nice and...and..."

That’s enough for Dean. Sam seems lucid, and he’s not turning blue or anything. But he’s also babbling about baking and getting all breathy about the perfect crust.

“I got it, Rachel Ray. Now up. Slowly.”

Dean gets an arm under him and helps Sam to his feet. He seems steady enough, but Dean can feel the weird tattoo of his heart vibrating through Sam’s pulse and yeah, it’s time to go. Nothing gets Dean’s panic bubbling like hearts not working as they’re supposed to. Halfway to the door, though, and Dean wonders if he’s the only one with any panic issues here, because Sam insists they stop so Dean can wrap the pastry up and switch the oven off before they leave for the ER. Sam genuinely seems more upset about his dough than his heart, and Dean will mock the shit out of him later. Much later. When they’ve been told it’s just tiredness – too much fucking baking probably – and Dean doesn’t feel like he’s about to have a heart attack all his very own.

It turns out Sam has Paroxysmal Super (Supra, Dean, _Supra_ ) ventricular Tachycardia, which, while not a heart attack, is way too long and Latin to be comforting. Dean has heard it on Dr Sexy, he’s sure. Right before the guy on the gurney gets paddled and flatlines.

A cardiologist explains how that’s not true, with smaller words and a plastic model of a heart which comes apart in Dean’s hands too easily for any peace of mind whatsoever. It’s an episodic rapid heart-rate, the doctor explains. He then points at the jumpy mess of Sam’s heartbeat on a long piece of paper and asks a lot of awkward questions about Sam’s history. The only one Sam answers with no fidgeting, is the one about addictions.

“I was an addict,” he says, “when I was younger.”

_Jesus Christ_

“And now?” the doctor asks.

“Recovering,” answers Sam, and Dean wants to hit something.

He doesn’t talk to Sam on the way home. He knows he’s being a dick, but it is what it is and it’s better if he just drives for now. Sam doesn’t seem to mind. He studies the pamphlet the doctor gave him like Dean’s going to test him on it, and idly scratches at the band aid on the back of his hand from the IV. The medicine they’d hooked up had him pissing like a racehorse, but it had gotten the galloping heart beat under control pretty quickly.

By the time they get back, Sam is yawning and still fretting about his dough. Dean takes the wooden spoon out of his hand, smacks him on the shoulder with it, and leads him to the sofa.

“Dean, I’m okay. I’m just...” another yawn, “tired, man.”

“So sleep,” says Dean, guiding him down.

“Sleep with me?”

Sam is slow-blinking, muzzy, and pretty hard to resist.

Dean manages, though. “Nah. I’ll get you a pillow.” Sam had trouble lying down at the hospital, said it felt like drowning. Which had Dean grinding his teeth the whole way through the ECG and about ready to punch the nurse by the end of it.

So yeah, the princess can have as many fluffy pillows as he needs.

“That high enough?” he asks, getting one more pillow behind him. Sam is more sitting than lying, but he nods around another yawn. “I’m fine. Dean...” Sam grabs onto Dean’s sleeve, stops him from rising.

“What?”

Sam looks at him, blinks, tugs.

Dean sighs but crouches until he gets eye-level with his brother. He pushes hair out of Sam’s eyes. “What?” he says again, but with less bite. Sam is really too dopey to be anything but sweet to. “Let me up, man. There’s stuff I gotta do, and you’ll sleep. Doc said you’d be knocked out for awhile.”

“Wanna suck you.” Sam slurs, eyes already closing, lips smacking. 

Dean can’t help but lean forward and kiss him for that, even as he’s shaking his head. “Dude, right now you couldn’t suck beer through a straw. Go to sleep, will ya?” 

Dean folds Sam neatly onto the sofa, then he stands and listens to him breathe. He has an awful feeling it’s going to become a habit.

 

And it does. Though it doesn’t seem to be anything Sam can’t live with. If he minds waking and sleeping with Dean’s hand pressing on his chest he never says. And if a shitload of pillows appear on the bed and Dean starts bitching about a crick in his neck every morning, well, doesn’t mean the pillows are disappearing anytime soon.

But there are some things which take longer to get used to.

Like sex.

Dean knows how fast his own heart goes when Sam is balls-deep inside him, or jacking him just so, so there is no way Dean is going to have Sam’s heart out of control like that, not until they’re sure. Besides, Sam has to walk around all wired up for a day with a Holster Monitor. ( _Holter_ , Dean. Whatever, Sam.)

Dean gets some dark looks for that, even after Sam is unplugged (Sam’s godawful pun, not Dean’s). It turns into some pretty pitiful whining, which is entertaining, but not enough to change his mind. He’s got his right hand till they figure this out, and Sam...well, Sam can just bake more. Take his excess energy out on the oven.

Two days later, Sam gives up coffee with an ease Dean finds both appalling and medal-deserving. Just shrugs his shoulders and says no when Dean goes to fill his cup. Shortly after that a jar marked ‘decaf’ appears, and Dean wonders if he too should offer to give up the dark Brazilian roast Carla makes up especially for him.

“Dude, it’s my heart condition. Don’t, I like the smell of yours.”

Dean deliberately loses a foot rub to Sam over Wheel of Fortune that evening, because anyone giving up sex *and* coffee deserves a bone or two.

****

More than a week passes and Sam seems to be doing okay. The doctors said it would be episodic, and for Sam to simply take it easy the first week or so after the initial ‘event’. (Not an attack, Dean. An _ee-vent_.) Which Sam seems to be doing. He’s walking every morning, working out probably when Dean isn’t looking, but he’s sticking close to home and doing nearly all of his accounting work on his laptop at the kitchen table. Dean decided to give up mocking his nerdy brother’s second profession the day Sam gave up caffeine. He figures it’s more of a gift horse now.

And that gift horse is downstairs, tap-tapping away for a new client. Dean, on the other hand, has had a long day under a rusted hunk of metal his boss seems to think can be saved with nothing but Dean’s elbow grease and a wrench. So he’s just out the shower and contemplating how damn fine being horizontal in some cool sheets is gong to feel when he’s rocked off his heels and spun round. Sam is suddenly not downstairs anymore.

“The fuck?” Only he doubts Sam hears him since his mouth is full of toothpaste. 

“I am fine, Dean. _Fine_. And horny. God, it’s been nine days, my test results are okay, I don’t need daily medication. So just...”

Sam’s hand is down Dean's shorts, his mouth is on his neck and Dean is about to choke on toothpaste.

“...spit that out, and fuck me already.”

Dean does the first but not the second. So he gets the blowjob of a lifetime right there in the bathroom because that’s Sam for you; never happier than when he’s proving Dean wrong.

Sam is on his knees, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, chest heaving.

As for Dean, he can barely stand.

“Sam...” he manages, hauling his brother up and ignoring the lassitude trying to drop him to the floor. He kisses the taste of himself deep in Sam’s mouth while his palm seeks out Sam’s heart. The beat is fast, but steady, and Dean realizes Sam’s shoulders are rising and falling for a whole other reason.

“See?” pants Sam, guiding Dean’s other hand down to his dick. “I’m fine. Now.. God, yes... just like... _Dean_...”

Dean bites his neck and has him coming and babbling in less than a minute.

Later that night, the moon is high, the cicadias are in full concert and they’re both awake and side by side on their backs. Sam slides his hand over Dean’s on the mattress and says nothing. Dean waits, sensing a moment he’s not going to be able to get out of.

“You know, if this is the price I pay for all the messed up shit I did back then, I’m going to count myself the luckiest guy on the planet.”

Dean doesn’t say anything for a few minutes. He knows Sam’s right. It’s just... Of all the fucked up shit between them, nothing ever hurt as much as Ruby, nothing ever enraged Dean as much as her blood in Sam, and nothing, not even Sam as T1000, ever made Dean feel as brotherless.

“You don’t know that,” is what he says.

“No I don’t,” says Sam. “If I start drooling and smearing shit on the walls, we’ll know I was wrong.”

Dean takes his hand away. He tries to turn his back on Sam, because fuck that shit. But this is Sam, who simply follows Dean over and wraps around him from behind. He bites Dean’s ear, stupid and gentle and moves his own palm over Dean’s chest. He holds on for a second or two, then shakes him a little. “Dean, I haven’t seen the devil in five years, had a vision in ten, or kissed a demon in...forever. So if my heart is going to do its own thing once in a while, it’s nothing to get weird about.”

“I’m not—

“Dean...”

“Yeah, okay. Maybe I am.”

Sam, goddamn him, has a point. 

“Hey, if you want it to be because of the wall, or Cas, or clowns beating the crap out of me, then pick your poison. I mean, I could only tell the doc about one thing...”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. You’ve made your point. I’m being an asshole. I guess you should be used it to it by now.” He eases Sam’s hand off his chest. “Now move back, will you? You make us buy a goddamn king, and I gotta have you and your octopus limbs all smotherin’ me.” Dean thumps his pillow and resettles, every bit the grumpy bastard he knows Sam loves.

Sam goes up on an elbow behind him. “We’re having sex again, right?”

Christ. 

Dean glares up at the face peering over his shoulder. “I’ll fuck you through the floor right now if it’ll make you shut up. You wanna?”

Sam, the fucker, just smiles. All slow and sure. “Nah. Save it till tomorrow. We both got an early start and you need your beauty sleep.”

“Fuck you, princess.”

“Tomorrow, dude. Jeez, don’t you listen?”

But it’s Sam who doesn’t listen. Dean begins to fall asleep with Sam pressed up behind him, hand over Dean’s chest again.

“Freak,” Dean mumbles, fighting a yawn.

“Your freak,” whispers Sam.

“My sappy freak,” says Dean. Because seriously...

“Eh. Shut up and let me sleep.”

Dean wriggles back. He is so getting off work early tomorrow.

******


End file.
